In particular, the present transport system comprises at least two sensors which are capable of and used for determining a position of one or more carriers along a carrier track, wherein each of the sensors being interconnected with each other and being arranged in a daisy chained manner along the carrier track.
However, transport systems and in particular transport systems in the form of linear modular systems (LMS) are already well-known from prior art. In particular, it is known from prior art that a LMS system comprises a transport track that uses many positioned measurement sensors to measure the position of the carriers on a track. Setting up a single track requires, however, a lot of cabling and additional electronics to manage all sensor signals. This also increases the chance of track commissioning problems as a result of a faulty cable.
In particular, current position sensors produce multiple analogue signals. Each sensor is therefore connected to an analogue multiplexer and the multiplexer is again connected to a motion controller, wherein the motion controller uses the analogue signals to determine the position of the carriers on the LMS track.
As already implied above, a production and commissioning of a LMS track takes a lot of effort. One of the main reasons is the amount of complexity of the sensor cables that need to be fabricated and tested before getting the track in operation. Once assembled, the cabling can also be wrongly connected (e.g. two sensor connections are inverted).